22 February 2013

John Critchley Prince in Hyde, Greater Manchester

The grave of John Critchley Prince in St George's churchyard, Church Street, Hyde. The inscription is no longer easy to read.

'ERECTED

BY A FEW ADMIRERS

TO THE MEMORY OF

JOHN CRITCHLEY PRINCE

AUTHOR OF

HOURS WITH THE MUSES

BORN 21ST JUNE 1808

DIED 5TH MAY 1866.'

(ADDENDUM: There are three links at the bottom of this page: click on the last one for a view of the grave after the clean-up.)

The poet John Critchley Prince was born in poverty in Wigan, his father being a reed maker and a heavy drinker. Prince became an apprentice in his father's trade at the age of eleven.He died in his 'lowly house' in Brook Street, Hyde and his funeral was attended by, among others, Edwin Waugh, Benjamin Brierley, Samuel Laycock and Elijah Ridings.

Below is the full chapter on Prince from Thomas Middleton's Annals of Hyde and District: Containing Historical Reminiscences of Denton, Haughton, Dukinfield, Mottram, Longdendale, Bredbury, Marple, and the Neighbouring Townships (1899):

'JOHN CRITCHLEY PRINCE

Author of Hours with the Muses

JOHN CRITCHLEY PRINCE, the Bard of Hyde, was one of a band of gifted singers and prominent literary man—self taught be it said—whose names are household words in the great industrial hive about Cottonopolis. In his day Prince was a great force in the active life of the manufacturing north, and probably no writer ever exercised a greater power over the people, or pleaded more eloquently for the emancipation of the sons of toil. Just as Burns was the bard and wonder of the farmer–folk of Ayr, so was Prince the wonder, the product, and the pride of the factory workers of Lancashire. His lays cheered them through long years of weary labour, filled them with fresh hopes and aspirations, and now when the writer has gone to rest, their melody still lingers and many weary hearts are gladdened by its sound.

Critchley Prince was born on June 21st, 1808, at Wigan, in Lancashire. He was brought up amid the greatest poverty, and was never sent to school. His education was obtained solely from his mother and from the teachers of a Sunday School. The Princes eventually settled in Hyde, where the poet married in 1826, when under 19 years of age. His income at the time was very small, and when a young family appeared, it took the united efforts of both parents to procure even a bare subsistence. Misled by glowing accounts of the prospects of artisans in France, Prince at length left his family to seek his fortune abroad. Disappointment, however, met him on the Continent; the greatest distress prevailed, and unable to obtain work, he found himself a beggar in a strange country, possessing no knowledge of the language.

In the middle of the winter of 1831 Prince left Mühlhausen to return to Hyde. He followed the romantic wanderings of the Rhine, exploring the ruined castles and visiting the principal scenes of legendary lore. Travelling through Strasbourg, Nancy, Rheims, Chalons, and most of the principal cities, he at length arrived in Calais, having subsisted on the charity of the few English residents he had met with on the way. A passage was procured for him by the British Consul at Calais, and he at length set foot again in England.

On his return Prince first applied for food and shelter at a workhouse in Kent, and was cast into a filthy garret with 12
other unfortunates, some of whom were in a high state of fever; indeed, the dawn of the next day found his bedfellow dead. From here he proceeded with bare feet to London, begging in the daytime and sleeping in the open fields at night. A portion of his clothing he sold at "Rag Fair" for 8 pence, which treasure he spent partly in allaying the dreadful cravings of hunger, and partly in the purchase of paper and writing materials. Entering a neighbouring tavern, he wrote as much of his own poetry as the paper would contain, and that task done he went round to a number of booksellers, hoping to dispose of the manuscript for a shilling or two. But disappointment again met him, and after staying in London a short time—lying on the stones of some gateway at night, he left the metropolis and set off northward. His biographer tells us that he slept in barns, vagrant offices, under hay–stacks, in the lowest of lodging–houses; one day he ground corn at Birmingham, another he sang ballads at Leicester, the cool night wind found him sleeping under the oaks of Sherwood Forest, and finally he rested his weary limbs in the " lock–up " at Bakewell. By perseverance, however, he at length reached Hyde, only to find that his wife, unable to sustain herself and children, had been obliged to apply for parish relief, and was then in the workhouse at Wigan. Prince hurried off to that town, removed his family to Manchester, where he took a bare garret, and without furniture of any sort, with a bundle of straw for a bed, the wretched family remained several months. The Princes subsequently returned to Hyde, where a fairer fortune smiled upon them than had been the case in former years.

It was not until 1841 that Prince published his first work, "Hours with the Muses." He contributed at different times to the Manchester periodicals, and to three now defunct local magazines, "Microscope," "Phoenix," and "Companion."

The publication of " Hours with the Muses " brought Prince numbers of friends, but unfortunately he became a prey to habits of intemperance. He seems to have fallen into an unsettled state, sometimes working at his old trade of reed–making, often hanging about the country, and chiefly depending for subsistence on the profits of the five successive volumes which issued from his pen. An attempt was made to secure for him a pension, which, although fruitless as far as its main effort was concerned, won for him a grant from the Royal Bounty. He died at Hyde in 1866, and was buried in St. George's Churchyard, where a head–stone commemorating his works has been erected over his grave by a few admiring friends.

Prince's fame as a poet has been for the most part provincial, although his writings have been frequently quoted by the press in all parts of the world. His verse exhibits unmistakeable signs of genius, and is well worth perusal. la all his poetry there is a decided literary quality, which is surprising when one remembers that his surroundings were anything but encouraging to study. Another pleasing feature of his work is that it is so little touched with the spirit of the misanthrope, or hate of the moneyed class, as one might have expected from a writer who had suffered so bitterly the pangs of poverty. There is a gracefulness of expression, and a musical flow in the language, which rather indicate the well–read and educated man than the wearied, self–taught artisan. His verse is permeated with a deep reverential spirit and an inherent love of nature. This latter quality is shown forcibly in his stirring lines on Kinderscout:

Dark Kinder! standing on thy whin–clad side,
Where storm and solitude and silence dwell,
And stern sublimity hath set his throne
I looked upon a region wild and wide :
A realm of mountain, forest haunt, and fell,
And fertile valleys, beautifully lone,
Where fresh and free romantic waters roam.
Singing a song of peace by many a cottage home.
Oh! is it not religion to admire.
O God! what thou hast made in field and bower,
And solitudes from man and strife apart

To feel within the soul the awakening fire
Of pure and chastened pleasure, and the power
Of natural beauty on the tranquil heart;
And then to think that our terrestrial home
Is but a shadow still of that which is to come.

Prince gave forth in the form of verse the national aspiration after "progress, peace, and temperance," and his lyrics are among the finest that have been written on those topics. Indeed, on those questions his poems attained the force of platform power, and as such they have been, and are to day, often quoted. The poet's greatest sympathies probably lay with the efforts made toward the amelioration of the working–classes, to which he belonged, and his feelings in this direction were clearly indicated in his numerous "Lyrics for the People." One of them is well worth quoting. It is headed

"The Songs of the People."
Oh! the Songs of the People are voices of power
That echo in many a land.
They lighten the heart in the sorrowful hour
And quicken the labour of hand;
They gladden the shepherd on mountain and plain,
And the mariner tossed on the sea;
The poets have given us many a strain,
But the Songs of the People for me.

The artizan, wending full early to toil,
Sings a snatch of old song by the way;
The ploughman who sturdily furrows the soil,
Cheers the morn with the words of his lay;
The man at the smithy, the maid at the wheel.
The mother with babe on her knee.
Chant simple old rhymes, which they tenderly feel,
Oh! the Songs of the People for me.

An anthem of triumph, a ditty of love,
A carol 'gainst sorrow and care,
A hymn of the household that rises above.
In the music of hope or despair;
A strain patriotic that wakens the soul
To all that is noble and free;
These lyrics o'er men have a strong control,
Oh! the Songs of the People for me.

As before stated, Prince was no misanthrope, and he seems to have been instilled with hope as to the future of the English toilers. The following verse is quoted from the stirring poem, "A call to the People."

O God! the future yet shall see
On this fair world of thine,
The myriads wise, and good, and free,
Fulfil thy blest design;
The dawn of Truth, long overcast,
Shall kindle into day at last.
Bright, boundless and divine;
And man shall walk the fruitful sod,
A being worthy of his God.

Of the facile and musical flow of his language many evidences could be quoted; the following, however, will suffice. The lines are taken haphazard from a poem called "The Maid of a Mountain Land."

A smile of delight from all went round,
As she turned to the casket of sleeping sound;
On the tremulous keys her fingers fell.
As rain-drops fall in a crystal well;
Till full on the ear the witchery stole,
And melody melted the captive soul;
She touched the cords with a skilful hand,—
That dark-eyed Maid of a Mountain Land.

One of the best of Prince's poems is "The Golden Land of Poesy," and the following verses extracted from it are evidently the poet's own estimate of his work.

At length, oh joy! the enchanted shore
Loomed up in far-off loveliness,
And I grew eager to explore
The wondrous realm;—my tears ran o'er
With very gladness of success;
Odours of spices and of flowers
Came on the breezes flowing free;
Rich branches, reft from gorgeous bowers,
Bestrewed the wave;—the land was ours—
The Golden Land of Poesy.

Not yet! a barrier crossed my way—
My shrinking vessel back recoiled;
I could not reach the sheltering bay.
For rocks and shoals about me lay.
And winds opposed, and water boiled,
Thus baffled by the Poet-God;
I only brought—alas for me—
Some waifs and strays from that bright God;
Which I have seen, but have not trod—
The Golden Land of Poesy.'

A link to R. A. Douglas Lithgow's biography of Prince is below, and the website has a number of other links to information on Prince.

Britaine

Slump, by Will Self

Gallia – Ménie Muriel Dowie

Gallia (1895) is a rather obscure novel which emphatically belongs to the New Woman sub-genre, and concerns a young intellectual woman who refuses to comply with the prevailing gender constructs: this is a Victorian woman with spunk.

Westering Women

Chancy develops the theory of culture-lacune, a revolutionary strategy by means of which Haitian women writers both celebrate and fight the absence and the loss which has been the female voice in the history of the country. In Haitian women writers, a folkloric figure is used as a tool: they 'reformulate the marabout eternalized in Oswald Durand's still popular folksong "Choucoune" of 1883.' Whereas Durand's Choucoune is a figure of betrayal who stands for a lost Haiti, the women writers transform her and reclaim her for themselves. Some writers included in this study are Anne–christine d'Adesky, Ghislaine Charlier, Marie Chauvet, Jan J. Dominique, Nadine Magloire, Edwidge Danticat, and the earlier writers Virgile Valcin, and Annie Desroy.

The Clansman – Thomas Dixon

The Marrow of Tradition – Charles W. Chesnutt

At the end of The Marrow of Tradition (1901), the black Dr Miller enters the house of the white Carteret family in an attempt to save the life of their young child. Previously, Major Carteret had not allowed Miller to tend to his son because Miller is black, and Miller's own young son has just died in a skirmish instigated by the Major himself. Clearly, Chesnutt's focus of interest is not on the fate of the white family's son, but on the integrity of Dr Miller. The novel is set 'Wellington', although there are parallels between this fictional town and Wilmington, North Carolina, which was the scene of a 'race riot' in 1898. Dr Miller represents the 'New Negro', the educated, ambitious and socially aware black person beginning to emerge through many years of slavery in the Southern states, through the subservience of Uncle Tomism, through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and now through the appalling compromise of the Jim Crow laws in the South.* Most of all, though, all black people have to battle against a wall of prejudice that still exists, where whites not only segregate and bar, but are only too eager, particularly via lynching, to apply the rule of the mob. The book is a kind of thriller and obviously is influenced by many Victorian novels that have gone before it (and there is an unfortunate strong touch of melodrama towards the end), but it is evident that the novel's main purpose is didactic. *Along with T. S. Stribling's Birthright and Chesnutt's own Mandy Oxendine, there is a scene in which the segregation of blacks from whites on a train takes place.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil – John Berendt

I approached this book, which Edmund White calls a 'non-fiction novel', with some caution because of its great popularity: I'm generally very suspicious of books that are popular. However, I was very pleasantly surprised, and also surprised that it has in fact proved so popular, as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is hardly a conventional novel. It's a love affair John Berendt had with Savannah, Georgia, and which brought a stream of tourists into the city in search of the human and architectural sights mentioned, such as Bonaventure Cemetery (where the poet Conrad Aiken's bench grave stands), or perhaps a sighting of Savannah's larger-than-life characters, like 'female impersonator' The Lady Chablis, or hope for an invitaton to a party such as the ones thrown by Joe Odom, the highly likeable con merchant. These characters move around the main story, which is the murder of the priapic Danny Hansford by his employer and occasional lover, the antique furniture dealer Jim Williams, who lived in the impressive Mercer House, the former home of songwriter Johnny Mercer. The novel is funny and fast-moving, but there is a structural problem: it is too episodic, and although the murder and subsequent trials are the central issue, the colourful characters who flit in and out of it somehow don't merge too well with this central interest.

Life in the Iron-Mills - Rebecca Harding Davis

First published in 1861 and based on the experiences of Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910) in Wheeling, Virginia, which is today in West Virginia, Life in the Iron-Mills is now seen as a seminal work of American realism. This short story, originally published in Atlantic Monthly, was her masterpiece, and was rediscovered by Tillie Olsen, who wrote an Afterword to the Feminist Press edition in 1972.

Birthright - T. S. Stribling

See post for comment (using the 'SEARCH BLOG' facility to the top left of the page).

Feather Crowns - Bobbie Ann Mason

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café - Fannie Flagg

In Country - Bobbie Ann Mason

Mandy Oxendine - Charles W. Chesnutt

This novel was originally written towards the close of the 19th century, and was in fact the first novel Chesnutt wrote. However, The House behind the Cedars (1900) was his first published novel, and it would be 100 years after Mandy Oxendine was written that it was in fact published. This is the story of two mixed race lovers - both of whom could pass for white - Mandy and Tom Lowrey, who part for two years while Tom goes off to educate himself. When he comes back, it is to work in a school for black children, while Mandy is in a white school passing herself as white. Tom's problem is that Mandy now believes that she is in love with the rich womanizer Robert Utley, although the novel develops into a thriller - almost a whodunnit - when Utley is killed when attempting to sexually assault Mandy. A tale of race, class and gender conflict, Mandy Oxendine was considered too daring for publication at the time it was written.

Anitfanaticism: A Tale of the South, by Martha Haines Butt

An anti-Tom novel, and the only novel by this author.

Dorothy Allison – Bastard out of Carolina

Gods in Alabama - Joshilyn Jackson

Starting at Zero: Black Mountain College 1933-57

Fremsley (1987) – Ivor Cutler

A collection of poems, musings and observations from the eccentric Glaswegian Ivor Cutler, a man who was admired by people of all ages. When The New Musical Express once asked him how he would spend Christmas, he said in bed, with the bedclothes pulled around him until it went away. The most notable in the collection: 'A Strategy Suit with a Jelly Pocket'.

The Autobiography of Samuel Bamford: Volume Two: Passages in the Life of a Radical

Roger Vailland: the Man and His Masks – J. E. Flower

Mrs Caldwell Speaks to Her Son (1953; trans. 1968) – Camilo José Cela

Originally published as Mrs. Caldwell habla a su hijo.

Her (1960) – Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Ferlinghetti is best known as the co-founder of the City Lights bookstore and publisher on Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA, which published Allen Ginsberg's first book of poems, Howl, in 1956. Ferlinguettti's most well known work is A Coney Island of the Mind (1960). The bookstore is recommended, as is the pub Vesuvio's next door to it (with Jack Kerouac Alley between), which is a kind of shrine to the Beat Generation.

As I Was Going Down Sackville Street (1937) – Oliver St John Gogarty

Oliver St John Gogarty is perhaps best remembered for his relationship with James Joyce. A former drinking partner of Joyce's in the early years, Gogarty later became the butt of Joyces insults. In Joyce's early poem 'The Holy Office', Gogarty is represented as a snob, and more famously, there is another representation at the beginning of Ulysses (‘stately plump Buck Mulligan’) in the Martello tower: Joyce had stayed with Gogarty in the Martello tower at Sandy Cove.

The Days Before – Katherine Anne Porter

Critical essays from the Texan noted for her short stories Flowering Judas (1930) and Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), and for her novel Ship of Fools (1962)

The American 1930s: A Literary History – Peter Conn

Interesting for its inclusion of a number of obscure writers.

A Feast of Snakes (1976) – Harry Crews

Harry Crews is one of the wild men of literature. Of working-class origin, Crews writes about the underbelly of America, of drugs, alcohol abuse, and trailer park communities in the Deep South, for instance. He was born in southern Georgia but has spent most of his life in Florida. The problem is perhaps that he also spent too long parodying himself, and it can make us forget his undoubted importance as a serious writer. This is a link to a youtube interview, in which he boasts of spending 30 years of his life drunk every day, and illustrates this problem very well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpeFmXJG4Ak.

Tomorrow is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South, 1859–1936 Anne Goodwyn Jones

How Late It Was, How Late (1994) - James Kelman

James Kelman - H. Gustav Klaus

James Kelman - Simon Kövesi

The most comprehensive critical work on Kelman so far, although it was published too late to include his latest novel, Kieron Smith, Boy.

Translated Accounts - James Kelman

A Disaffection - James Kelman

The Ticket That Exploded - William Burroughs

Festus: A Poem - Philip J. Bailey

A plaque on a building on the north corner of Fletcher Gate and Middle Pavement, Nottingham, UK, reveals that the writer Philip James Bailey (1816–1902) once lived there. Bailey was born in Nottingham and educated in Glasgow, and is usually associated with the Spasmodic school of poetry along with J. W. Marston, S. T. Dobell, and Alexander Smith. He is most noted for Festus, a huge work to which Bailey was continually adding, and which was heavily influenced by Milton's Paradise Lost. Its most famous lines are: 'We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts not breaths; / In feeling, not in figures on a dial / We should count time by theart throbs; he most lives / Who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best.' There is a bronze bust of Bailey by Albert Toft at the rear entrance to Nottingham Castle.

The Life and Times of Thomas Spence P. M. Ashraf

The Kretzmer Syndrome - Peter Way

The Withered Root (1929) - Rhys Davies

My Wales - Rhys Davies

Soldier Songs - Patrick Macgill

Skerrett - Liam O'Flaherty

A Pig in a Poke - Rhys Davies

The Home-Maker - Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Half an Eye: Sea Stories - James Hanley

The Contradictions - Zulfikar Ghose

The Death of Christopher - John Sommerfield

Boy James Hanley

Rhys Davies: A Critical Sketch - R. L. Mégroz

Ellen Glasgow - Barren Ground

The Back-to-Backs (1930) - J. C. Grant

A real obscurity. When it was published, this book – which depicts life in a mining community – was roundly attacked for what was considered to be a brutal attack on the life of miners. Very little is known of Grant, who also wrote poems, although his birth certificate reveals that he was born in Alnwick, Northumbria, to a father who was an author, newspaper editor, and manager.

Trouble dans les Andains - Boris Vian

Spacetime Inn - Lionel Britton

Senselessness - Horacio Castellanos Moya

Le Rivage des Syrtes - Julien Gracq

Rhinocéros - Eugène Ionesco

The Poor Mouth - Flann O'Brien

Out Such Between Through Christine Brooke-Rose

A Frolic of His Own - William Gaddis

Caligrammes - Guillaume Apollinaire

Belle du Seigneur - Albert Cohen

Plays, Poems and Theatre Writings - Joe Corrie

Trouble in Porter Street - John Sommerfield

Men Adrift - Anthony Bertram

Truly Obscure. A novel about philosopher and a writer who meet on a boat. They talk.